Test the Spirits

1Jo 4:1 (GNB) My dear friends, do not believe all who claim to have the Spirit, but test them to find out if the spirit they have comes from God. For many false prophets have gone out everywhere.


1. Will know them by their fruits

Mat 7:16 Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
Mat 7:17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
Mat 7:18 A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.


Gal 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith,
Gal 5:23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.


2. The Spirit of God will Confess Jesus as Messiah, God's Son, the Word made flesh

1Jo 4:2 This is how you will be able to know whether it is God's Spirit: anyone who acknowledges that Jesus Christ came as a human being has the Spirit who comes from God.
1Jo 4:3 But anyone who denies this about Jesus does not have the Spirit from God. The spirit that he has is from the Enemy of Christ; you heard that it would come, and now it is here in the world already.


1Jo 4:2 (MSG) Here's how you test for the genuine Spirit of God. Everyone who confesses openly his faith in Jesus Christ--the Son of God, who came as an actual flesh-and-blood person--comes from God and belongs to God.
1Jo 4:3 And everyone who refuses to confess faith in Jesus has nothing in common with God. This is the spirit of antichrist that you heard was coming. Well, here it is, sooner than we thought!


3. False Spirits Talk the World's Language. Instead of the Truth, they tickle the ears of listeners with what they want to hear instead of what they need to hear.

1Jo 4:4 My dear children, you come from God and belong to God. You have already won a big victory over those false teachers, for the Spirit in you is far stronger than anything in the world.
1Jo 4:5 These people belong to the Christ-denying world. They talk the world's language and the world eats it up.
1Jo 4:6 But we come from God and belong to God. Anyone who knows God understands us and listens. The person who has nothing to do with God will, of course, not listen to us. This is another test for telling the Spirit of Truth from the spirit of deception.



4. Love for one another just as He first loved us. The Spirit moves us to show our love to God by loving people.

1Jo 4:7 My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God.
1Jo 4:8 The person who refuses to love doesn't know the first thing about God, because God is love--so you can't know him if you don't love.
1Jo 4:9 This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him.
1Jo 4:10 This is the kind of love we are talking about--not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they've done to our relationship with God.
1Jo 4:11 My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other.

1Jo 4:19 We, though, are going to love--love and be loved. First we were loved, now we love. He loved us first.
1Jo 4:20 If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won't love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can't see?
1Jo 4:21 The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You've got to love both.



5. Keep His commandments. The Holy Spirit and messengers from God will never say or do anything contrary to God's Word.

1Jo 5:2 The reality test on whether or not we love God's children is this: Do we love God? Do we keep his commands?
1Jo 5:3 The proof that we love God comes when we keep his commandments and they are not at all troublesome.